Marin, Bay Area firms toy with innovation

BRIGHT RED-AND-BLUE airplanes made from recycled plastic milk jugs, a purple plush "huggtopus" with eight legs and a 6-foot-long leopard-print shark puppet are some of the creative toys on sale this holiday season from companies based in Marin and the Bay Area.

"Most of the toys made locally tend to be educational, classic and fun in their orientation," said Bay Area-based industry expert Stevanne "Dr. Toy" Auerbach. "They're not the Mattels and the Hasbros, they're not animated characters on TV. They provide the basic quality of play children need to enjoy themselves and learn something."

One of the top picks on Auerbach's list is Mill Valley-based Green Toys. The company uses modern-day environmental alchemy to transform used milk jugs into toys including airplanes, dump trucks, jump ropes and pretend pizzas with every imaginable topping except BPAs, PVCs, phthalates or external coatings.

"Our concept is to make safe, eco-friendly toys here in the United States," said Green Toys co-founder Laurie Hyman. The company is based in Marin and has a factory in San Leandro.

"I went to their factory and saw the products being created," Auerbach said. "They are doing something very innovative and colorful and interesting and bringing back a basic kind of play with a new use of materials."

Buying from local companies is not only environmentally friendly, it benefits local economies. In a study of 15 independent retailers and seven independent restaurants in Salt Lake City by consultant Civic Economics, local retailers returned a total of 52 percent of their revenue to the local economy, compared with 14 percent for national chain retailers.

Kimochis, the company that makes the aforementioned purple "huggtopus," is another Marin-based toy company high on Auerbach's list.

"Kimochis has to do with children expressing their emotions, which is hard sometimes for them to do. The company makes different characters to help them," Auerbach said.

The San Rafael company's "mixed bag of feelings" toy is a bag filled with coin-shaped cloth faces, a smiling gold one for happiness, a crying blue one for sadness and so on. A child can choose the face that best expresses his or her current mood.

"We want to get the kids to understand how they're feeling so they will say, 'I'm really mad right now,' instead of biting or kicking or punching," said Nina Rappaport Rowan, who co-founded the company with another Marin mom.

Though not strictly toys and hence not on Auerbach's list, the brightly colored recycled lunch kits and reusable steel bottles of Kids Konserve are good candidates for holiday presents. Many of the company's products are made from recycled cotton and recycled plastic bottles.

By using the company's reusable containers instead of paper sacks, plastic baggies and other single-use containers, a child will save an estimated 67 pounds of trash from the landfill each school year, according to Chance Claxton, one of the company's two co-founders and a Corte Madera resident.

"My daughter was going to a preschool where any trash produced from lunch came home from school and I was shocked at how much waste there was," Claxton said.

Locally made eco-friendly toys are available in many Bay Area cities outside Marin, and another Dr. Toy favorite is Blue Orange Games, based in San Francisco.

This company makes board games, crafting the pieces from wood, and plants two trees for every one tree used in the creation of its games. Among other things, Blue Orange Games makes Yamslam, a dice game for ages 8 and up, and Sketch It!, a game that involves guessing and sketching at the same time.

Emeryville is a veritable hotbed of toy companies. Folkmanis, the company behind the 6-foot shark puppet, also sells pig, rooster, frog and dog puppets. Leapfrog, a 17-year-old Emeryville company known for its high-tech educational toys, released the LeapPad 2 this spring, a highly praised interactive tablet made specifically for children.

"There's tremendous diversity in local products," Auerbach said.

"It's important to know what your child likes and their preferences. Watch what they play with. Take the child with you to the toy store and give them a chance to tell you what they like. They don't have to get everything they want, but just going to the toy store can be fun for children," Auerbach said.

In addition to promoting local toy companies, Auerbach is a fan of local toy stores such as Toy World in Greenbrae, Doodlebug in San Anselmo and A Child's Delight in Corte Madera and San Rafael.

"It's like patronizing the local bookstore," the toy expert said. "They get to know you and your child. When they know your child has a particular interest, such as science or games, they might be thinking about how to match your child with products they might see. You don't get that kind of personal attention from the big box stores."

Bay Area-based Dr. Toy is one of the nation's leading experts on play, toys and children's products. Her four annual programs include: Best Classic Toys, Best Vacation Products, 100 Best Children's Products, and Smart Play Products of Excellence. She has written 15 books, including "Dr. Toy's Smart Play/Smart Toys: How to Raise a Child with a High PQ* (*Play Quotient)." Her website is www.drtoy.com.

mARIN-BASED PRODUCT GUIDE

Green Toys Website: www.greentoys.com Where based: Mill Valley Product: Toys made from used milk jugs Where available: On the website; Whole Foods stores; Toy World in Greenbrae; A Child's Delight in Corte Madera and San Rafael.

Kimochis Website: www.kimochis.com Where based: San Rafael Product: Plush toys Where available: On the website; Whole Foods stores; Amazon.com; local toy stores including Doodlebug in San Anselmo.

Kids Konserve Website: www.kidskonserve.com Where based: Arizona; four of company's six employees live and work in Marin Product: Lunch bags and other containers Where available: On the website; Whole Foods; more than five Marin locations listed on website.